Entropy-Based Applications in Sociophysics, Third Edition

Dear Colleagues,

The study of sociophysics has greatly increased in the last two decades. The models used in sociophysics mainly envisage the macroscopic dynamics of social systems or/and networks. Then, the statistical physics tools successfully applied in treating diverse systems in the physical world are used to find extensive applications in problems related to such topics. Stauffer, in 2012, raised an interesting and rather fundamental question: does sociophysics have any practical applications? The answer came in 2017, from Galam, with a model that uses local-majority-rule arguments and obeys threshold dynamics. Within this perspective, the dynamics of opinions obey discoverable universal quantitative laws and can be modelled in the same way that scientists model the physical world. As a consequence, inspiring very active practitioners, opinion-dynamics models have become a mainstream of research in sociophysics. In these models, opinion entropy, based on Shannon entropy, is a useful tool to evaluate the uncertainty of opinions, when exploring the dynamics of opinion entropy and “controlling” the formation of public opinion.

As a result of cross-fertilization, mixed research fields use knowledge, methodologies, methods and tools of (statistical) physics (and thermodynamics) for modelling, explaining and forecasting social phenomena. Needless to say, there are many concepts that have not been used or objectives that have not yet been considered.

Moving forward, we wish to provide researchers with the opportunity to present studies that provide not only standard statistical physics modelling techniques but also rather novel ways of analyses, sourced from entropy, from which arise complex, theoretical and practical ideas.

Thus, this Special Issue is intended to contain articles of prominent and creative researchers in the field of sociophysics. We hope that this Special Issue will be an inspiration in these fascinating areas of broadly understood modern and challenging applications of (statistical) physics and thermodynamics ideas and concepts.

Dr. Francisco W. De Sousa Lima
Guest Editor

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